Rammblings and Madness

Just purchased a B&W Brother HL-2142 Laser,

Ubuntu compatibility is plug in wait and print work out the box. (10.04)

$99 from office works.

Only fault does not come with a USB cable !

If your a commonwealth bank customer and you use ubuntu or other linux OS you may find that the Netbank website is extremely slow to login to.

Solution install nscd name server cache daemon

sudo apt-get install nscd

apt://ncsd

by the way this was found out by putting a complaint into the commonwealth bank which the complaint was swiftly replied to with generic flush your DNS for windows instructions and further instructions saying that AVG link scanner also is known to slow down Netbank. but once I dismissed these solutions as not solving the problem they then actually asked real questions got me to try and different dns server.  I also got plenty of phone calls check that my problem has been resolved or that at least someone is attempting to fix it so there ads must be right..

In the long run Commonwealth bank need to fix there DNS so that there sub-domain address is faster to look up.

In the short term my problem is fixed if it’s only a speed increase when I log into Netbank for the 2nd time, since the cache seems to clear on each restart.

AGVCRtoMPEG2 – is an old and outdated program that can convert your AGVCR recordings to avi or mp3.

README can be found at https://svn.ci.uchicago.edu/svn/if-media/AGVCRToMPEG2/README

Dependencies from apt repos:

• Scons
• Subversion
• Build-essentials
• libgsm
• libsamplerate
• libz

sudo apt-get install scons subversion build-essential libgsm1-dev libsamplerate-dev libz-dev

Download the code form the svn repository

svn co https://svn.ci.uchicago.edu/svn/if-media/AGVCRToMPEG2

We have to use the exact version of ffmpeg that he used in development since he has used superseeded functions from the ffmpeg libiary

svn co svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg -r 5652

Configure and Make ffmpeg (don’t install unless you want to)

cd ffmpeg

./configure

make

Next we have to edit the scons file in cd ~/AGVCRToMPEG2 , it is meant to take the command argument of where you complied the version of ffmpeg but it seems to use old and outdated scons code so we hard code the location in.

Using your favourite editor e.g vim SConstruct

On line 23:

ffmpeg_path = env['ffmpeg_path']
#ffmpeg_path= /home/jack/D/project/ffmpeg

change to

#ffmpeg_path = env['ffmpeg_path']
ffmpeg_path= ‘/home/carma/ffmpeg’

replace carma with your username

We can now attempt to compile the code with the the command scons. but your most likely to get errors due to poor C++ coding most are just related to messing #includes

The following files will need to be edited:

AGVCRToMPEG2.cpp
VPMedia/video/h261/VPMH261ASEncoder.cpp
VPMedia/video/h261/VPMH261Encoder-mash.cpp
VPMedia/video/VPMVideoBufferSink.cpp
VPMedia/video/VPMVideoAssembler.cpp
AudioMixer.cpp
VPMSSRCManager.cpp

To make things easier attached is the output of svn diff AGVCRTOMPEG2_904update.patch Note gunzip because of wordpress security doesn’t allow patch files.

gunzip AGVCRTOMPEG2_904update.patch.gz

now patch

patch -p0 < AGVCRTOMPEG2_904update.patch

Compile attempt 2

scons

Readme contains many examples and hopefully you now have a working system.

By default you can not browse samba shares in Linpus being based of XFCE there is no XFCE file browser that support samba, you can still doing it using a hack and fuse smb. ok so everything is done in command line so start with Alt+ F2 then type in xterm to get our command line.
sudo yum install fuse-smb
We then need to add our linpus user “user” to the fuse group
sudo usermod -a -G fuse user
We can check that this command worked with “id user”
Create a new folder in our home directory
mkdir samba
Mount fuse to our new directory you will also need to run this code every time you reboot.
fuse /home/user/samba

cd into the samba folder or open up thunar and navigate to the /home/user/samba folder and there should be your samba network.

The guys at Kuki Linux, have released a deb package of a slightly more custom kernel (latest wireless added etc..) than the vanilla ubuntu and debian kernel.

You can view the Tutorial on Kuki website:

http://www.kuki.me/tutorial/installing-kuki-linux-kernel-on-ubuntu-810

Hopefully it means that it will be easier to install ubuntu and debian on to a Acer Aspire One.

Christmas was very good to Gabz, he scored Wii controllers, remote control helicopters and of course what this post is about, a new netbook, namely a Acer Aspire One, Linpus 512 Mb Ram 8 Gb SSD.

Impressive Parts

• Size, Weight and Keyboard.
  It’s small like you would expect but the keyboard is easier to type on that the XO olpc which is the only other netbook sort of thing I’ve gotten to play with. It’s really light weight and the battery is giving me 2.5 hours.
• Boot time – Linpus got one thing right 14 second boot time from cold boot it also does hibernate but that isn’t really any slower than a cold boot.
• 3G Modem support. If your 3G modem is made by Huawei (Optus, Vodafone or 3 ) then your in luck once you download the software from the acer site the Huawei modems work great. They even use the same software as you would under windows so you can still send those SMS messages. only extra step is making a new profile for your modem.
  

  Mobile Partner

• If the 8 Gb SSD Isn’t enough for you, you can expand with a SD Card they even merge the 2 drives together to appear as a single drive.
• Also the webcam is builtin, the Mic is placed well and once you download Skype from the acer website it works great.
• If you brought the extra USB DVD-RW like I was given you be pleased to know that under Linux you have DVD playback out of the box. Also the DVD-RW DL powers just from the USB port so no extra cables needed.

Unimpressive Parts

• LINPUS ! – For starters it’s based on Red Hat (Fedora) being a Debian guy I find this to be a negative.
  Limited Range of Software, Acer isn’t supporting much they have an Acer game installed which is trial ware. Not really impressed that the full range of linux software isn’t easily available on this distro.
• Security ok when you start linpus for the first time, you set the root password. Ok fair enough but there is no User password. Which is ok by it self. But guess what the user has no password but has Full SUDO rights ?! So if you ever want to change the root password on any linpus Acer try “sudo passwd”
  

  Root Password changing

Basically I’m very happy with this Netbook, and most of my problems will be solved in the coming weeks when I get Ubuntu on to this netbook. Though I would love a way to decrease the Ubuntu boot to the 15 second range.

Ok after several thousand Google searches. credit to this post for having what i wanted

I finally found what i needed. the command to bring up the shutdown options in gnome.

I wanted to do what alot of other people have wanted to do is put a big arse shutdown button on the desktop for those computer users which can’t find the little one hidding in the right of your screen.

plenty of misleading post about a short cut to “sudo shutdown -h” but that’s not what I wanted.

gnome-session-save –kill

Is the magical code you need to make it work.

how to make the shortcut that’s easy right click on the desktop “Create Launcher..” click.

Name: shutdown Command: gnome-session-save –kill Comment: anything you like.

And you can click on the icon and try and find a new one.

Then you are done a nice shutdown button for all your blind users.

Most Mathematicians use Latex for their documents on the other hand most ‘normal’ people use some sort of word processor.

The Open Office Latex plugin is the compromise.

Basically the only reason you would use it over Latex is…..

You can share an open office file with your non Latex converted friends, you know those statistics students who are doing other degrees not maths and you are forced to do group work with them.

Other reasons yeah.. OOo has a spell checker … it’s easier to insert pictures.

Anyway installation: go grab the file from http://ooolatex.sourceforge.net/ save and download.

Install using the install extensions tool in open office. Installs just like a Firefox extension.

yeah next part is configuring it.

Frankly the instructions on the website where lacking at this part of the process.

I couldn’t find the config section because I didn’t notice the new bar underneath file.

And no suggestions where the binaries for Latex and ghostscript would be except for a mac screenshot. But since this is my ubuntu box it was easier solved with locate:

/usr/bin/

For both binaries.

Next thing was having a play.

Using the “equation” button, you are presented with a fairly confusing screen, working out things like when you select inline in the equation menu you don’t need to put in the $ $ and selecting emf as the output image format didn’t work so I used png, took some trial and error.

Basically the plug-in has no polish.. only experienced computer and latex users should give it a go.

In order to do my stat2000 labs i need to use JMP, the university gives out copies of JMP out to students on some sort of site licences, the instructions where to go down to uprint and pick up a disk for a small fee ($5). I went down got my disk took it home, and too my disappointment it was only the windows version. JMP is multi-platform as shown by the System Requirements

A couple emails later to lecturers then he emailed desktop services, i got a email saying that they have a license file for me and a disk with the Linux installer.

Which brings the next problem the linux installer really is only a Red Hat installer. And my linux of choice is of course ubuntu.

gabriel@ubuntu1:/media/cdrom$ ls -la
total 506854
dr-xr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2008-03-06 12:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2008-03-13 16:57 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 10 2008-03-06 12:07 cd.id
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 fonts
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 java
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 29142815 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-base-al-7.0.1-1.i686.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 54675183 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-lang-deDE-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 54591039 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-lang-enUS-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 54693795 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-lang-frFR-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 119767152 2007-09-29 04:47 jmp-lang-jaJP-7.0.1-4.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 92146971 2007-09-29 04:47 jmp-lang-koKR-7.0.1-3.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 106242682 2007-09-29 04:47 jmp-lang-zhCN-7.0.1-4.noarch.rpm
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 5241003 2007-09-29 04:48 jmp-setup
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2477691 2007-09-29 04:48 jmp-setup-al-1.2-3.i686.rpm
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 media_data
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 order_data
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 product_data
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 11536 2007-09-29 04:45 ReadMe.html
dr-xr-xr-x 8 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 Resources
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 tools
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 unixODBC


So we have a random binary jmp-setup and some rpms.

So we start with the rpms i think. Start be installing alien
sudo apt-get install alien

The next setup is moving the files off the cd-rom on to the hard drive as alien needs to be run where you have read write access.

We convert the following rpms.

sudo alien jmp-lang-enUS-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
sudo alien jmp-setup-al-1.2-3.i686.rpm
sudo alien jmp-base-al-7.0.1-1.i686.rpm


Install your new debs using dpkg

sudo dpkg -i jmp-setup-al_1.2-4_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i jmp-lang-enus_7.0.1-2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i jmp-base-al_7.0.1-2_i386.deb


I located JMP in my /opt/SAS/JMP7 folder.

I ran sudo ./jmp and yay it showed up in well outdated qt goodness..3.3.8 but the next problem was the license file, i copied and pasted it over from the email i was sent and added it but apparently it’s invalid. Of course having to run jmp as root isn’t ideal but it’s better than rebooting to windows.

Edit:

After reading the License file again there where 2 lines which looked odd 32 and 33, they started the line with a * instead of a space like all the other lines. i deleted these leading *’s and what do you know the file worked fine i now have a working version of JMP installed on ubuntu.

No Problems found yet but i haven’t started my assignment.

Back at uni again to my horror the IT guys changed the wireless. all the time spent on writing a really nice documentation on how to connect all wasted since they now used a completely different connection method ,  this time i decided to rewrite the doc but use a wiki so it can be edited by others.

So if you’ve come to this site going how do i do the dam thing see wiki.newcastlelug.org

Currently it still in development but it’s moving on quickly since it’s now Wednesday, the changes happened Monday and last time it took me 3 months to work it out this time 2-3 hours.

Biggest change to the uni wireless seems to be the access control program i can’t get my POP3 emails or my IMAP emails while at uni which is a big pain. that and the access control program requires java which isn’t always installed on our linux laptops is it !

Anyway i should be concentrating back on classes but you know how it is.

Gabriel